GE to Announce Smart Lights with Microphones at CES – Alexa in the Ceiling

Alexa, Google Assistant and soon Siri may be accessible from the lights in your ceiling. GE’s C collection of smart lighting products is expected to release a new ceiling light at CES next week with an integrated microphone and speaker according The Verge, CNET, Slashgear and several other publications. This means you wouldn’t need a smart speaker in every room to have voice assistant access. Your lighting will have integrated smart speakers in every room.

Ubiquitous Voice Assistant Access for Ambient Computing

This is another step in ubiquitous voice assistant access in our ambient environment. We have already seen voice assistants leap from mobile devices to smart speakers to appliances. Now we are looking at voice assistant access migrating to the utilities embedded in our ceilings and walls.

Loyal Voicebot readers will recall a March 2017 interview with Mike Elgan where he predicted this very development. Elgan said at the time:

I think the best place for virtual assistant appliances are glasses and lightbulbs. Lightbulbs are everywhere. I would love to see every lightbulb in the future have connectivity to home wifi and have a microphone and a speaker. AI should recognize our voice so it knows who we are when we speak to it… Kids won’t care where the microphone or speaker are. They will just assume they are there.

GE agrees with Mr. Elgan. The future is coming fast. Voicebot will be at CES next week to provide readers a first hand account of the many new products that will add voice access in 2018.